(June 30, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) A number of people, representing various groups from six countries, visited Sri Lanka. Charles Antonidas, one of the visitors, has produced a statement on the purpose of the visit for Tamil Solidarity.Here we publish Charles Antonidas’ statement.
Nine of us made a fact finding visit to some parts of Sri Lanka recently. They were there from 14th-20th June 2010.
The objectives of the visit were to:
1. Review the current conditions in IDP camps;
2. Review the conditions of the camps of the rehabilitees;
3. Review any ongoing relief /rehabilitation activities;
4. Appraise the procedures that have been laid down by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) for humanitarian organisations to provide facilities and support to the IDPs and the rehabilitees;
5. Appraise any support that government administrations at district and divisional levels could provide to facilitate delivery of rehabilitation efforts from the Tamil Diaspora.
During this stay, the delegates had discussions with Mr Selvarasa Pathmanathan and were taken to meet Mr Gothabaya Rajapakse and the Foreign Minister Prof. G.L. Pieris. They requested permission to visit the above camps and some sites where rehabilitation work is being carried out. Visits to these places were arranged and they managed to review the conditions / activities therein, though only limited opportunities were possible for extended discussions with the IDPs or rehabilitees.
However, the delegation was able to:
1. Obtain some relevant information to facilitate planning of humanitarian projects;
2. Motivate the IDPs to engage in livelihood activities;
3. Arrange additional educational facilities to prepare for GCE A/L examinations shortly;
4. Arranged physical education and provided equipments;
5. Arranged telephone facilities for incoming calls for rehabilitees;
6. Arranged further professional courses for rehabilitees.
The overarching mission at this juncture is to provide humanitarian assistance to the IDPs and rehabilitees, who are living in impoverished conditions and crying out for help. The delegation is endeavouring to reduce further unnecessary deaths and pain being inflicted on them. Great efforts are necessary to reach out and help them. The engagement we had with the authorities was purely to help us to serve the needy people in the North and East.
We would very much liked to have discussed our humanitarian endeavours with a united entity of MPs representing the Tamil speaking people in the North and East, but due to its absence we pursued the above approach. We hope that in the near future opportunity for this will be there.
The delegation did not participate in any discussions relating to politics, peace or infrastructure development. Also, has not channelled any funds through GoSL agencies, and will not do so in the future.
We will be more than happy to share its findings with any humanitarian organisations having similar objectives as its own.
A human rights group has written to IGP Requesting legal action against the policemen attached to Rajangana police for continuous threats, intimidations, cruel inhuman degrading treatment and torture against the residents.
by Chitral Perera
(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) “The police in Rajangana acts like terrorists and intimidate the residents of the area. They torture the arrested people. They also fabricate charges and remand people whom they have taken to custody. Up to now there are four persons in Anuradapura remand prison who were inhumanly tortured by Rajangana police. They disclosed before the magistrate about torture and they were referred to the Judicial Medical Officer of Anuradhapura.
This same police referred these four people before the main doctor of Rajangana hospital after torture and with his support filled the false judicial medical forms.
Suba Hewage Samantha Bandara is 23 year old youth who resides at 11 Rajangana yaya. He is a disabled war hero after a jonny butta bomb blast which caused leg injury when he was engaging in the humanitarian mission. He was removed from active work and engages in Yakkala Apparel service.
On 08 May 2010 several policemen including policeman Jayasundera who were drunken and in civil clothes stormed to the house of Samantha Bandara and assaulted him inhumanly. These policemen blamed his mother using abusive language and also hit the dog of the house and took him to the police station. At the police station he was beaten again. He was taken behind the police station and hanged him on a tree called “kohoba” and assaulted. It was mentioned that the assault directed to his injured foot.
He was produced before the courts after three days on 11.05.2010. He is now in ward number 14 of Anuradhapura hospital.
They also tortured the residents of Rajanganaya named Dissanayake Mudiyanselage Nishantha Dissanayake, the resident of Vavuniya, Nelukuluma , 27 year old named Manikkawasagre Thawadanwa and the resident of Thambuththegama, Rajina junction named Mangala Prabath in the same manner and remanded.
Dissanayake Mudiyanselage Nishantha Dissanayake was arrested on 21.04.2010 but the police who refused his arrest and took detention orders on 30.04.2010 and detained him until 27.05. 2010. He was produced before the Magistrate in Nochchiyagama. He told about the torture at the courts. He was beaten hang on a tree. As result of the assault his right hand was broken. Up to day his hand is not active.
It states that he is taken to the Anuradhapura hospital for treatments by the prison. He takes his food using left arm while in prison. His wife was not allowed to see him. So she complained to the Human Rights Commission in Anuradhapura on 28.04.2010. As a result of this they had taken detention orders and produced him before the courts on fabrication of charges and remanded him as an attempt to hide torture.
A 27 year old Mannikawasagar Thawadan who resides at Vavunia, Nelukkuluma was arrested on 21.04. 2010. He was also tortured, had taken detention orders and remanded him like the same manner they did to Nishantha Dissanayake.
Mangala Prabath who resides at Thambuththegama, Rajina junction was also hanged and assaulted. As a result of this he injured critically. He is now in Anuradhapura remand prison. He too told the magistrate of Thabuththegama about the police assault.
We urge to take legal and disciplinary actions against the policemen attached to Rajangana police who intimidating and engaging in constrictive way of crimes and request to ensure the safety of the people in Rajanganaya.”
by Basil Fernando [June 30, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian]
The Disabled Ticket Seller With a severe head injury Found dead ,is the news.
Five more similar cases of beggars And disabled killed not long ago Whose hand is behind all this ?
Those who try to beautify the city, Are they not the suspects?
Moral ugliness of all this Does not catch The city dwellers eyes When a nation is morally dead Murderer is seen as a purifier And a beautifier , a liberator , a hero.
Such a nation deserves a dictator. Weep for my lawless mother land,weep,weep.
(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Colombo Crime Division today produced the wrong suspect in the Colombo High Court where the case against the suspects involved in the assassination of Major Gen Parami Kulatunga is taking place.
The mistake was ditected when CID ASP A. Collure was called to give evidence in the case. He said that the suspect in the dock was not the suspect .
The suspect produced was Raj Gopal, but the actual suspect was Vasu Gopal who is currently in the Colombo Remand Prison for allegations that he was spying on the movements of Gen Kulantunga before his assassination took place in 2006.
The suspect Vasu Gopal has already made a confession about following the movements of Maj Gen Kulatunga and passing on the information to an LTTE leader known as Kannan.
Court issued notice on the CCD OIC to be present in court on July 28 and also produce the actual suspect.
(June 30, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Matale Magistrate Saliya Perera has been interdicted with immediate effect by the Judicial Service Commission.
The interdiction came after an inquiry was held into the allegation that the Magistrate had failed to give reasons in his judgments for sentences passed and therefore the accused were unable to appeal.
Antoher allegation against the magistrate was that he had failed to report to work, without prior notice.
The inquiry was held by Supreme Court judge, S.I.Immam who is also the Commissioner of the JSC.
(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Since his landslide election victory in January Sri Lanka’s president continues to bring key ministerial positions, including the once independent attorney general’s office, under his control, with legal experts warning the moves are undermining democracy in the country. After the appointment of a new cabinet earlier this month following Mahinda Rajapaksa’s successful re-election and his ruling party’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections last month, the president has taken over the portfolios of defence, finance, ports, aviation and highways.
His younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, was appointed minister of economic development earlier this month and handles tourism and economic development across the country among other portfolios. Another brother, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, was retained as defence secretary at the ministry.
But the most significant development that has shocked many jurists is the office of the attorney general, the chief prosecutor for the state, being brought under the president although it is an independent institution under Sri Lanka’s constitution.
In Sri Lanka, presidents are allowed to bring any ministry under their control but traditionally they only take on the defence and finance portfolios, more than those two is highly unusual – taking control of the attorney general’s office has never happened before.
“Unprecedented,” said Kishali Pinto Jayawardene, a legal scholar and columnist for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times newspaper. “Placing all this power in the hands of one individual has never happened before in Sri Lanka.”
While there had been growing concern among the public over the domination of the government by the Rajapaksa family, the placing of the state’s chief legal officer under direct control of the presidency has become a serious issue, raising concerns that the president could influence prosecutions.
Until now, the office has been officially independent from the government but it is widely believed that over the past decade, the attorney general and judges were subject to influence by the political authorities.
“What was de facto is now de jure,” Ms Jayewardene said, explaining that political influence in public prosecutions and the judiciary was unofficially happening already. But now, she said, it has been formalised.
Jehan Perera, a human rights activist and a weekly political columnist for the daily Island newspaper, said the concentration of power in the hands of the president and his brothers undermined the country’s democracy.
“This is not sustainable as there ought to be checks and balances in a democracy through delegation and clear separation of powers,” Mr Perera said.
“The miserable state of the opposition and its inability to raise these issues is also of concern.”
JC Weliamuna, another well-known constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, who also described the powers of the president as unprecedented, said most people outside the legal profession and higher levels of civil society are unaware of the ramifications of the powers being held by one individual.
Mr Weliamuna said the attorney general’s role is to represent the public above political considerations. “If he comes under the president, this would be a conflict of interest,” he said. As these developments have unfolded, international human rights groups, including Amnesty International, last week repeated earlier calls for an independent investigation into human rights violations committed by Tamil rebels and government troops during the last stages of the 26-year civil war that ended in May 2009.
Amnesty urged the UN to set up a panel to investigate the violations.The UN had earlier announced it would create such a panel but the move has been delayed due to objections from Sri Lanka. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group, headed by Louise Arbour, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called on foreign governments to impose travel sanctions on visiting Sri Lankan officials and their families unless Colombo co-operates with an independent investigation into the violations.
"Sovereignty is fundamental, foundational and non-negotiable. The trite legalese that pits "citizens’ sovereignty" against "state sovereignty" forgets that the very category of a "citizen" exists precisely because of the state; he/she is a citizen of a state. " ____________________
by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
(June 30, Singapore City, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka’s once shattered and broken territory – the boundary of the state — has been fused, but the nation remains fissured. How is it to be unified? This is all the more urgent because the visible absence of an ongoing post-war political process of ethnic reconciliation is either partial motivation or excuse for much of the current external intrusion. A manifestation of this new intrusiveness is the UNSG’s appointment of an advisory troika on Sri Lanka.One of them, Prof Steven R. Ratner, who commenced his career attached to the US State Dept, has written critically of the ‘talisman of sovereignty’, the G 77 which he describes as states which "attach great — almost exaggerated — importance to the concept of sovereignty" and of China. Significantly he is an authority on ‘Ethnic Conflict and Territorial Claims’ and ‘New Borders’ and his work has featured in anthologies and colloquia on international law as pertains to ethnic conflict, self determination, the breakup of states and the emergence of new ones.
The international community which tilted against Tamil separatist terrorism during the war is now showing signs of tilting against the Sri Lankan state in a seeming bid to forestall Sinhala domination over the Tamil people/areas. The recent international moves appear to be, at least in part, a bid to contain ‘triumphalist Sinhala hegemonism’ micromanaging the post-war order. These moves will escalate, proliferate and ramify. Thus it would be strategically prudent for the Sri Lankan state to nationally fast-track a mechanism and process for post-conflict political reconciliation of the ethnic communities.
It is a truism that a house divided against itself cannot stand, but how to unify a divided house—by coercion, or consensus based on conciliation, concession and cooptation? National unity cannot be created by shrill propaganda and internal suppression, but only by reaching out, convincing, and broadening the state’s support base by making all communities stakeholders.
In this regard, to the fashionable formula of ‘home grown’ which is taken as a panacea, I would add two others, that of ‘form and content’ and ‘best practices’. In the science of politics as in any other science, the form must be local, but the content must be that which is universally valid and proved to be so through experiment and verification. As Thomas Hobbes wrote "The skill of making and maintaining Commonwealths...consisteth in certain rules, as doth Arithmetique and Geometry". It would be useful to seek out these ‘certain rules’ and best practices from all over the world, regarding the problems that we face in Sri Lanka – those of nation building, post conflict reconciliation and ethnic/majority-minority relations. These best practices should of course be creatively adopted and adapted in accordance with the country’s history, geography, culture and society.
When the borders of a state correspond to that of an ethnic or linguistic group, it is unproblematic to call it a nation-state. When the borders of a state do not correspond to the ethnic or linguistic distribution of the social formation, it is a ‘nation state’ de jure, but not de facto. That problem can be solved in three ways. One model is that the diverse ethnic communities combine into or consider themselves a single nation, almost always on the basis of equality or – a very rare variant—on the acceptance of inequality. The second solution is that of a trade-off in which the majority pretty much controls the state and the minority nationalities are accorded political space in their ancestral areas or ‘areas of historic habitation’. The third and worst solution is that two or more ethnically or ethno linguistically or ethno religiously homogenous nation states grow out of one, with each community splitting off to join their counterparts in a nearby country (irredentism) or simply seceding to form their independent nation states.
Now why doesn’t everybody exercise the first option? This is because it isn’t that easy, though it has been done with great success in many places, such as the world’s sole superpower, the USA. This solution requires equality of citizenship. It requires that no marker of any of the constituent communities be given Constitutional privilege over any other. It requires that the state be a neutral umpire as between the beliefs of communities.
It is not that Sri Lanka never got close to this model. It did under the Soulbury Constitution, though a closer fit to the model would have required incorporating a cardinal demand of the Left at the time: equality of status for Sinhala and Tamil languages. It is arguably the kind of policy of a meritocratic, multicultural Sri Lanka that would have issued from Ceylon National Congress, with a correctives pushed by the Left on citizenship and language, had DS Senanayake not broken away.
Indeed it would have been the kind of Sri Lanka that would have resulted from an SWRD Bandaranaike administration supported by the Left instead of the MEP, BJB, EPB etc (the Sinhala equivalent of the Hindu fundamentalist ‘Sangh parivar’). It might have been the Ceylon that resulted if in 1957, the Left had supported the Banda –Chelva pact and entered the government at that point.
This model of nation building failed in Sri Lanka because an influential section – perhaps a majority – of the Sinhala Buddhists had such a perception of threat as a minority in relation to the Tamils of South India and felt so disadvantaged by the colonial experience, that equality (or ‘parity’ as it was called in the 1950s) seemed unfair. They demanded and got a preferential status for the distinctive cultural markers that conferred on them uniqueness as a community: Sinhala language and Buddhism. While the Sinhala majority perceived this as affirmative action, it was perceived or experienced by the Tamil minority as discrimination. Then as now the Tamils, with their five thousand year old language (just defined as ‘classical’ by the Government of India) and large numbers of co-ethnics — many with high levels of achievement and elite integration overseas – were unwilling to accept assimilation or integration into a single Sri Lankan nation on the basis of surrender or subordination to the Sinhalese (manifested at the time in the official language policy of Sinhala Only, reinforced with mandatory ‘proficiency examinations’).
Tamil separatism as a politico-ideological project did not start out as a result of the policies of successive Sri Lankan administrations, but its acceptance by the Tamil people was. As AJ Wilson’s biography of his father in law, SJV Chelvanayagam, the father of Tamil Nationalism, proudly reveals, the latter had raised the idea of an independent country for the Tamils as far back as 1948, and a Tamil university in 1950, long before anyone had asked for a Sinhala university. As Prof Nira Wickremasingha points out in her book on modern Sri Lankan history and contested identities, this confirms that Tamil nationalism was not purely reactive or defensive but pre-emptive and strategic. I would venture to inquire as to whether Sinhala nationalism was, to some extent, a reaction to this precocious and premature Tamil nationalism. It is no less pertinent however, that the Tamil voters dismissed the platform of separatism as late as 1970 and embraced it only in 1977 and that Chelvanayagam himself had set it aside in favour of federalism, and something lesser, as contained in the Bandaranaike- Chelvanayagam Pact of 1957.
Armed Tamil separatism was utterly defeated in the last war and any kind of Tamil separatism is bound to be resisted by the state. If someday, it is propelled and sought to be imposed from without, there will be a protracted popular resistance which makes its sustainability untenable and unattractive.
With the options of integration on the basis of equality, assimilation on the basis of inequality, and separation, all ruled out as undesirable or unfeasible or both, what is the state left with but a model in which the minority has political space at the periphery? Here again, there are two broad variants, federal and non-federal. The federal model subdivides yet again between one in which certain regional units contain an ethnic majority belonging to the countrywide minority (ethno-federalism) and one in which the units are not constituted so as to provide an ethnic or linguistic majority. Federalism could vary still further as between a full or classically liberal federalism (Canada) and a quasi federalism with a strong centre (India).
First World societies generally find federalism more comfortable than do Third World societies. However, even in the former, there are many (the UK being paradigmatic) which steadfastly refuse to convert to federalism. In Sri Lanka, the proximity of Tamil Nadu fuels apprehensions that an ethnic federal unit would graduate to a separate Tamil country or federate with the larger South Indian landmass. This collective and abiding apprehension has reduced support for a federal option to such an insignificant level that it will not enter any serious political deliberation.
This leaves non-federal options of power-sharing or autonomy. There are two variants, the first being systems that are silent or agnostic on the definition, such as South Africa’s Constitution which makes for considerable regional autonomy but refuses to commit itself explicitly to federalism. The second variant is the explicitly unitary model which also has power sharing, which some societies term ‘the devolution of power’ and others ‘regional autonomy/provincial autonomy’. In these, the strength of the centre acts as a prophylactic on the possibility of internal administrative boundaries hardening into outer ones or internal units breaking free to form independent ones. These are, in actual fact, models of semi-autonomy. The Sri Lankan Constitution as it currently stands provides precisely for such an arrangement.
Sovereignty is fundamental, foundational and non-negotiable. The trite legalese that pits "citizens’ sovereignty" against "state sovereignty" forgets that the very category of a "citizen" exists precisely because of the state; he/she is a citizen of a state. The external encroachment on Sri Lanka’s sovereignty can ultimately be withstood and defeated only by internal solidity and solidarity. Sovereignty cannot be successfully defended by a state acting as a mono-ethnic straitjacket on the country’s stubbornly diverse, irreducible and colliding collective identities. It is best defended by a Sri Lankan state which represents all its peoples, acts as neutral umpire providing and guaranteeing adequate space for all ethnicities on the island. Sovereignty is secured by a Sri Lankan identity which accommodates all the country’s communities, paving the way for a broadly shared sense of a multiethnic yet single Sri Lankan nationhood.
The politics of representation and the politics of silenc(ing)
by Sivamohan Sumathy
(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On Sunday the 6th June, I attended a presentation on the use of video production in theatre by the Polish-German artist Karina Smigla Bobinski. The presentation which lasted roughly three hours was a visual demonstration of Karina’s work which was used in theatre productions as video back drop, installation or used as installation in conjunction with theatres and theatre spaces. Or to be more precise, this is what I understood.
Let me say from the outset, that this is not a review of Karina’s work. Much of the installations or the video productions were interesting and thought provoking; though to my own ‘artist’s sensibility, the work was necessarily nuanced and produced as avant garde within the spaces provided by the self consciousness of the (post)modernist operating within the European aesthetic. There was one that struck me as very powerful, an empty vacant white wall, that turned into shapes of different human beings when the spectator turned up near or in front of a particular spot on the wall to stare at the blank wall. This was self consciousness that pivoted on an attempt to understand the ‘other’, calling into question the notion of the self sufficient other.
In view of this sophisticated representation of the self/other, I was surprised to see another presentation that struck me as solidly orientalist. A representation of Iranian women through a shadowy tracking of their forms through the chadors (the tents) that they were put in. This troubled me a great deal and I asked a question of the dual othering of these women who are seen as not being able to speak on the Iranian stage: An othering undertaken by the state of Iran and the womanist sensibility of the German theatre duo.
SCENE I: Staging representation
This question triggered an interesting response from the theatrical space of our own stage that day. Here I am writing about the theatre space of the Goethe Institute in Colombo and the enactment of a politics of voice and voicing. What I refer to here is my viewing of Karina’s presentation with a bunch of other people, mostly Sri Lankans, at the Goethe Institute in Colombo. My question posed at Karina brought on a curious and disconcerting experience for me, one which has less to do with her video production and more to do with theatre, the theatre space of the Goethe as a centre imparting and sharing with locals the cultural heritage of Europe, of the past and the present; and secondly the drama of speaking, listening, querying, counteracting and in the end, silencing.
The scene of the theatre was as follows: Karina presented the productions on screen, punctuating it with extensive anecdotal, technical and production related comments. Her commentary was quite elaborate.
‘We’ as viewers and listeners asked questions in between the screening of the separate items. As many of the participants found it difficult to follow the presentation in English, Anoma Rajakaruna translated Karina’s presentation and answers and in some cases the questions as well, when the questions were asked in English.
A few questions were asked about certain issues, largely technical and about the thematics. Some had to do with the location of the production and the whys and wheres and whats of the production. One of the video productions had to do with representation of Iranian women IN and INSIDE Iran. The women were placed in tents (if I understood it right) and the tents swayed about, implying the movement of the women inside; and there were images of women’s faces projected on top of the tents. At the end of the short production there was an invitation inscribed on the visuals inviting the people, the viewers (of the original theatre I presume, not at Goethe) to come on stage to visit the TENTLAND. Only women were allowed. There was a script in Farsi, Arabic or some other language along with the German that ran across the screen for the most part of the production.
Then something disconcerting happened, disconcerting to me. In sharing this disconcerting moment with other people, people who were not present at the Goethe, I wish to perform a different kind of theatre, a theatre of discomfort and risk. I risk putting a rather private and conversational episode that happened between friends and colleagues up for public view and analysis. At the same time, I risk placing in discomfort friends and colleagues and in turn myself by turning what would be deemed as incidental into a political act of articulation and revoicing of my question. I risk jeopardizing my cordial relations with all those present; some of whom are rather dear to me.
Yet, this is theatre after all. So, let me proceed. Here I reproduce an email I wrote to one of the viewers in that space, who intervened during my interjection and said that we should move on. Let me begin with the question I posed at Karina. My question was as follows (roughly): "While women in IRAN are not permitted to appear on stage, as ruled by Ahmadinejad, your own production too, appears to be a silencing of the women in a curious way. For instance, the ethnographic music coupled with the script that ran across the screen in Farsi (presumably) and in German spoke to me in that manner." Karina kept on referring to the script that none of us could understand as Islamic. To a question asked by someone else, about whether the script was religious she said yes. But this particular viewer who understood German said the German script running underneath was not religious. One of us asked, what the script in ‘Arabic’ said. Karina did not know what it meant. But she insisted on calling it Islamic. I have seen some very powerful representations of Iranian women in very intriguingly strategic ways. Also of Saudi women. The way women subvert (in)visibility. That was missing for me here.
Some one else, seated by my side, asked why did the theatre duo, Karina and the Director of the Drama, whose name I forget now, wanted to do a play in Iran. The answer to that was: ‘Ahmadinejad cannot ask me, a woman from Europe, not to do theatre in Iran.’
In reproducing this conversation, well remembered, I am not trying to level some kind of accusation of racism at Karina, based on "you said that, you said this etc. etc.’ She was struggling in English which she did not seem to be too comfortable with and I am willing to take some of what she said in the broadest possible light; which on the face of it was rather questionable. But what I found really objectionable was the fact that the viewers, rather powerful Sri Lankan viewers, powerful in that particular context only, decided to deem my question not important. This is what I found offensive and as an attempt to silence the voice of the ‘marginal’.
In order to give a sense of the theatre of that happening I re-present my case in the form of an email I actually wrote and would have written to my friend and fellow viewer who in my view shut me up that day; told me that we should move on.
SCENE II: misguided missives
Dear ………
I had to rush off the other day soon after the presentation as I had another appointment. I wanted to talk to you. [This is what I wrote to my friend in my original email. But it is actually a lie. I was thoroughly annoyed, thought it was a club and did not want to stay back and chit chat] The video productions were quite interesting, though I had expected to see the theatre formation also in conjunction to see how it worked together. But that is okay. No big deal.
I am writing this more specifically with regard to my question the other day to Karina and the way it was handled by you. I was a bit perplexed to see that you shut me up, or stopped the discussion on my question from proceeding. The question was an important one for me, important because it dealt with representation of women who cannot, seemingly, represent themselves. Karina was trying to answer my question, but instead of letting her answer, you intervened and said that it was not an important question there. I was a bit perplexed, because I thought it was an important question. Also, I really don’t know why instead of letting Karina answer the question (I don’t know how much she understood my question, but she was trying to answer it) other people jumped in to talk about my question.
Anoma started translating my question, but before she could proceed other voices intervened to stop it. Your exact words: ‘Let’s not get into a discussion on exotic Muslim women.’ In response another viewer said in Sinhala, ‘This is outside the subject’. But how could he know what was outside the subject and what was not, since my question or Carina’s answer had not been translated and this particular viewer had asked for translations of everything in English into Sinhala? What gave him the power or the knowledge to decide on what is important?: Because another male voice, suitably proficient in both English and Sinhala (you were also translating into Sinhala) could rule on that as opposed to my English (and absent Tamil) voice?
My question was about the video production in front of us. It was a question about its semiotics. You tried to link the video ‘art’ to a similar production of Karina’s which you saw in Colombo. I think that is totally irrelevant. Firstly, what we saw that day was produced prior to the one you saw. Also, more importantly, what we saw that day stands by itself , semiotically, and it triggered in me certain associations with orientalism. My words in the original email I reproduce here in order to capture my anger and frustration of the moment: "The very use of tents and worse, tentland, the way the women’s faces were used, the ethnographic music, the script in Farsi, which Karina had no f- idea about (Isn’t that a give away in the first place?), and she kept on calling it Islamic, but she did not know what it meant!!! And her attitude which I found repulsively euro centric: ‘Ahmenijidad cannot tell me, a woman in Europe, what to do!’ It was a case of, in a modification of Spivak’s words: ‘White women saving brown women from brown men.’
Why do I think my question was important? If you had asked the audience later about what they thought of Muslim women in this blessed country, you would have come across some of the worst stereotypes about Muslim women that are popular among non-Muslim people. I encounter it daily in my interactions with students and staff and with other people. I myself might be guilty of the same. Who knows? The visuals in Karina’s ‘art’ did nothing to dispel stereotypes about Muslim women in Iran or elsewhere. I am sure the person who intervened to say that my question was outside the subject has these views.
Why did you consider my question unimportant? Because it is about Muslim women? This was about women in Iran. But from my vast experience in discoursing on the subject of women any discussion on Iranian women invariably turns into a discussion on Muslim women in Sri Lanka.
Or did you consider my question unimportant because I asked it in English? Would you have condescendingly put up with it if I had asked the question in Sinhala? Or worse, Tamil, because you would not have had the foggiest idea about what it was all about, and there would have been nobody to translate. Or even worse, would you have not said anything if you had seen me as a Muslim woman? The absence of women visibly marked as Muslim gave you the authority to tell me, ‘Sumathy, let’s discuss it over tea?" You and I, non-Muslim and English speaking can be part of a clique and gossip over tea about Muslim women in chadors? Your words ‘Let’s not get into a discussion on exotic Muslim women’ continue to hurt and jar. I want to be fair. I do not want to pillory you for something you said in a hurry and in an agitated manner. Obviously it was not easy for you to ask me to keep quiet. You spoke hurriedly and the words just rushed out. I am not even suggesting that it was a ‘Freudian’ slip. No. It is not what you said that was and is irksome. The words have a certain usefulness for me as I attempt to make sense of the act of silencing. It was the act of silencing that I find objectionable and I find as partaking in a politics of othering.
Whom did that space silence? Me and not me. I had my say, and I left, presumably in a huff. No, it was not me you silenced. The issue itself was silenced and in turn, women who were absent there: the woman in purdah, or chador in Karina’s words or maybe the woman who might have spoken in Tamil. Again in an appropriation of Spivak from ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’: "Between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution and object formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the ‘third world’ woman caught between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernization’ (inverted commas mine).
I am writing this in the spirit of beginning a discussion on the subject and not in order to bicker. Talk to you later. I hope the workshop is going well.
Paper presented by Prof. G. H. Peiris at the H. L. De Silva Commemoration Programme 23 June 2010 at the BCIS Auditorium, Colombo.
by Prof. G. H. Peiris
(June 30, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) The doctrine of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (often code-named ‘R2P’), according to many of its advocates, refers to an obligation of the community of nations to protect victims of the more barbaric forms of human rights violations – specifically, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The primary responsibility of such protection within the confines of a State, the ‘R2P’ stipulates, should be borne by the government of that state. Where the government is unable or unwilling to discharge that responsibility it must be borne by other States that have the required capacity, collectively or individually, and where necessary, even with recourse to armed intervention.
The thematic focus of my presentation today is that, although the initial formulation of the ‘R2P’ may have been impelled by a genuine humanitarian concern for preventing atrocities inflicted on non-combatants in the course of inter-state or intra-state conflict, the subsequent campaign by its protagonists for its elevation to the status of an officially recognised "norm" governing international relations has exposed its potential of being converted to an instrument for the promotion of interests of the major global powers – "humanitarian imperialism", as postulated by Noam Chomsky (2008) – and to imperil the very existence of weaker States.
Background to the Emergence of ‘R2P’ Thought
External intervention in intra-state conflicts featured by gross violations of human rights, despite the infringement of principles of State sovereignty which such intervention invariably entails, has often been justified or rationalised with reference to the concept of the ‘Right to Intervene’ which is deemed to be founded upon certain principles enshrined in the ‘United Nations Charter’ of 1945, the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, and in other instruments pertaining to both relations between Nation-States as well as protection of human rights. Thus, despite the incongruities between such external intervention and the norms of State sovereignty, the ‘Right to Intervene’ has been exercised from time to time in the latter half of the 20th century either through the UN Security Council (Table 1) or, less frequently, by regional associations of States such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Community (in their interventions in former Yugoslavia), the African Union (in Darfur), and the Economic Community of West African States (in Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia; and even by individual States such as the United States, Russia, Britain and India on an unilateral basis.
Based on Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, ‘The United Nations and Internal Conflict’, in Michael E Brown ed. (1996) The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, MIT Press: 489-536
However, the problem, especially from the viewpoint of those at the forefront of promoting Security Council-sponsored external intervention for humanitarian purposes was that such intervention involved excessive procedural delays, the related procedures often generating intense dispute and dissention not only within the ‘UN Commission on Human Rights’ but also among the general membership of the UN. In the majority of such interventions, moreover, there were two adverse consequences – the inability of the Security Council to muster adequate resources and collateral support for implementing its resolutions (except in the form of dispatch of ‘Special Envoys’ or ‘Fact-finding Missions’ to venues of conflict); and, even more importantly, the frequent failure of such interventions to achieve their objectives due, in part, to deficiencies in the understanding of the complexity of most conflicts and, in part, to the lack of cohesiveness that featured the modalities of intervention. In conflagrations that were fuelled mainly by the lingering effects of super-power rivalry – for example, those of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mozambique and Namibia – UN interventions did contribute to the diffusion of tensions, although the basic cause for the reduction of violence was dissipation of the Cold War impulses. But the more general experience, particularly in the early 1990s, was that UN interventions resulted in aggravating and/or prolonging conflict, worsening human rights violations, and engendering resentment among member States regarding the duplicity of the major western powers, notably the United States, in promoting, avoiding or undermining intervention, depending on the ‘self-interest’ dimension in the different conflict situations. These negative features were vividly displayed in Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia, Cambodia, Iraq (Gulf War), Haiti, and, to a large extent, Serbia & Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia.
What provided the background to the emergence of ‘R2P’ was the increasing frequency of external coercive interventions in intra-state conflicts witnessed since the late 1980s (Table 1), and their failure to fulfil the expectations with which they were undertaken, especially by way of preventing genocidal atrocities in conflicts such as those of Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, and the successor States of Yugoslavia.
The ‘R2P’ concept in its embryonic form has been traced to the study on conflict resolution in Africa led by Francis Deng (1996) according to which State sovereignty entails the mandatory responsibility of protecting the citizen from the more gruesome violations of human rights. The groundwork for ‘R2P’ had, of course, already been laid by several earlier UN declarations, the foremost among them being, (a) the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ and the ‘Genocide Convention’ adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948; and (b) the ‘Covenants’ on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights’ adopted in 1966, along with their ‘Optional Protocols’ – one empowering the ‘UN Human Rights Committee’ established under the provisions of the Covenants to entertain direct submissions from individuals on alleged human rights violations, and the other imposing restrictions on the death penalty.
Throughout the Cold War era, even during the heyday of decolonisation in the 1950s and the ‘60s, the extent to which the rights of individuals as postulated by the ‘Universal Declaration’ could legitimise anti-systemic or secessionist revolt ("liberation movements") within sovereign nation-states hardly ever figured at the forefront of issues discussed, debated and acted upon by the UN. Thus, the two ‘Covenants’ of 1966 were essentially elaborations of the ‘Universal Declaration’, albeit with an enhanced focus on international collaboration in efforts at promoting political, economic, social and cultural rights. From evolutionary perspectives on UN involvement in human rights, however, the ‘Covenants’ did represent certain tangible advances. For instance, the pride of place accorded in them to the right to self-determination as an inalienable "universal right" had an element of novelty although contextually it was mainly an expression of the impatience of the world body with the remaining enclaves of colonial dominance. The two Covenants also contained recommendations on what could be considered in retrospect as a prototype of a UN-controlled enforcement apparatus in the form of a ‘Human Rights Committee’ consisting of 18 members elected by their signatories.
Despite these advances, except in the case of a few ‘flash-points’ perceived by the Security Council as serious threats to peace (represented by its perfunctory involvement in the Kashmir dispute, its backing of US interests during the Korean War, its intervention in the Katanga uprising in the Republic of Congo, and its sanctions against some of the more barbaric regimes such as those of Pol Pot in Cambodia, Idi Amin in Uganda and ‘White’ South Africa), the United Nations generally tended to refrain from direct involvement in situations of internal revolt and oppression especially those under pro-western autocratic regimes, even when they were featured by large-scale human rights violations.
Impulses for the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ It was only after the commencement of trends towards disintegration of the bi-polar geopolitical power configuration in the late 1980s alongside the on-going globalisation of neo-liberal paradigms of development that the human rights dimension of internal revolt in sovereign nation-states began to attract serious attention. Special impetus to the search for rationalisations and modalities of multilateral external intervention in conflicts within national entities was provided in the early 1990s when secessionist conflagrations ignited in the multi-ethnic nation-state of Yugoslavia – the first major post-World War conflict in Europe with which mass violence including ethnicity-based genocide was associated. At the United Nations an outcome of this search was the ‘Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action on Human Rights’ formulated and adopted by a UN-sponsored conference held in June 1993 a special feature of which was the massive scale of participation of non-government organisations.
The ‘Vienna Declaration’, like the ‘Universal Declaration’ upon which its scope was claimed (somewhat misleadingly) to be based, pertained to an amazingly wide range of concerns – political, economic, social and cultural – almost too numerous for specific mention. A careful perusal of this lengthy document shows that it was, in fact, an attempt to synthesise and update as comprehensively as possible the content of a large number of existing UN declarations and protocols, to reinforce the supra-national authority of the UN and regional associations of States in cross-border humanitarian interventions, and to elevate the status of transnational and state-level non-government organisations in matters concerning human rights and welfare. But what should be stressed is that, somewhat paradoxically, the Vienna Declaration also reiterated the principles enunciated in both the ‘Universal Declaration’ as well as the Declaration on ‘Friendly Relations between States’ that: "(N)o State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State". "Armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements were deemed to be in violation of international law".
From ‘R2P’ perspectives, the Vienna Declaration assumes special significance for two other specific reasons. The first was its recommendation to the UN Secretary General for the establishment of an ‘Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights’. This was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, and a ‘High Commissioner’ holding the rank of Under-Secretary General was appointed in December 1993.1 The flexibility that came to be attached to the mobilisation of manpower for this newly established office enabled it to recruit to its cadres at almost all levels persons drawn from transnational and national-level non-government organisations active in their ‘human rights’ pursuits, in most cases with lavish super-power backing. The second – closely linked to the first – was the formal recognition and importance accorded by the Vienna Declaration to non-governmental organisations in the protection and promotion of human rights. According to Paragraph 38 of the Declaration:
"The World Conference on Human Rights recognizes the important role of non-governmental organizations in the promotion of all human rights and in humanitarian activities at national, regional and international levels. The World Conference on Human Rights appreciates their contribution to increasing public awareness of human rights issues, to the conduct of education, training and research in this field, and to the promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. While recognizing that the primary responsibility for standard-setting lies with States, the conference also appreciates the contribution of non-governmental organizations to this process. In this respect, the World Conference on Human Rights emphasizes the importance of continued dialogue and cooperation between Governments and non-governmental organizations".
This seemingly innocuous statement had several implications of significance to the subsequent delineations of the global human rights campaign. In examining its ramifications it is necessary to take into account several crucially relevant but often ignored facts, one of which is that, transnational NGOs based in the ‘West’ such as, say, ‘Amnesty International’, ‘Human Rights Watch’, ‘International Commission of Jurists’ or ‘International Crisis Group’, sustained as they are by grants from western governments and private sources such as corporate donors which represent the interests and perceptions of the ‘West’, were the principal beneficiaries of the recognition accorded by the Declaration. Apart from all else, it is the NGOs of this type that were provided the means of arrogating for themselves formal authority and, more ominously, immunity from the repercussions of whatever blunders they piously commit in the name of human rights without any reciprocal accountability except to their donors. Moreover, the recognition accorded to this category of NGOs paved the way for organs within the UN to bypass the governments of the weaker among its member States and deal directly with elite-level NGOs in such States in matters deemed relevant to the protection of human rights.2
It is well known that the formalisation of the ‘R2P’ concept in its early stages was mainly the outcome of the report submitted in December 2001 to the United Nations by the Canada-sponsored ‘International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’ (ICISS). Despite the controversy generated by this report among member-States of the UN, a watered-down and abbreviated version of some of its recommendations was incorporated as Articles 138 and 139 into the so-called ‘2005 World Summit Outcome’ adopted by the UN General Assembly. Since then there have been intense efforts by those at the vanguard of the ‘R2P’ (including the UN Secretaries General Kofi Annan and his successor Ban Ki Moon) to further entrench and institutionalise the principal ingredients of the doctrine in the UN system. That these efforts have been at least partially successful is borne out by several references since April 2006 to Articles 138 and 139 of the ‘Summit Outcome’ in resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, and by the UN General Assembly debate on R2P in August 2009.
Since it was the ICISS that laid the formal foundations for the concept of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (‘R2P’) it is necessary to take note of certain features pertaining to its composition and its record of work. The ICISS consisted of 12 members, all of whom were appointed by the government of Canada. It was co-chaired by Gareth Evans (the then Chief Executive of the ‘International Crisis Group’ and Mohamed Sahnoon (a UN diplomat from Algeria). Only two of its members were from States that could face (however farfetched such an eventuality could be) the prospect of a future external interference with their rights of sovereignty (Philippines and Guatemala). Likewise, the ‘Advisory Board of the ICISS’, also appointed by the Canadian government, consisted of 16 members, only 4 of whom were from States that could become vulnerable to coercive external intervention (Venezuela, Chile, Palestine and Thailand). The ICISS, in the course of preparation of its report, did have a series of ‘round-table consultations’ with handpicked invitees in about ten host countries (one of which was New Delhi – the venue of the only "consultation" in South Asia) of which, significantly, Mozambique alone could, by any stretch of imagination, figure as a future target of ‘external intervention’.3 The ICISS report also had expert inputs from scholars and diplomats like Thomas G Weiss, Don Hubert, Francis Deng, Samantha Powers, Roberta Cohen and Louise Arbour - to name only a few. Yet, for all that, the overall impression conveyed by the information available on the process of formulation of the ICISS report is that it was almost exclusively a product of a small group of like-minded persons (highly distinguished, no doubt) at the forefront of the intensifying campaign for coercive humanitarian intervention in intrastate conflicts.
Sovereignty of a State, according to the ICISS, is not absolute and not inviolable, but is conditional on its government’s willingness/capacity to ensure the protection of human rights within its domain. When large-scale violations of human rights occur, it is the mandatory duty of other States that have the capacity to prevent such violations to intervene. The report urged that the non-performance of this duty should be looked upon as a violation of "an obligation of international law". Among the other ‘novelties’ discernible in the ICISS Report are:
(a) that the operation of R2P in conflict situations should entail a "continuum" of intervention involving, first, the prevention of human rights violation, followed by coercive action (including military intervention as a last resort) if attempts to prevent fail; and, finally, establishment of safeguards against future violations;
(b) that R2P-impelled interventions are made principally on behalf of victims of alleged atrocities – and "should embrace the victim’s point of view" (whatever that means) ; and
(c) that, since the capacity of a State (or a group of States) to intervene in the prevention of gross human rights violations in another State depends on "geographical distance" from the venue of such violations, the neighbouring States that possess the capacity to intervene should carry a relatively greater ‘responsibility to protect’ without, however, entailing diminution of the obligation of other States, particularly those represented in the UN Security Council, to intervene in the protection of people from rights violations.
Implications of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’
The submission of the ICISS Report to the UN was accompanied and followed by the appearance of many publications authored by prominent human rights activists with diverse institutional affiliations and representing various persuasions. These were, in general, intended to buttress the ICISS case for coercive intervention to preventing gross violations of human rights, overriding, where necessary, the sovereignty rights of individual States. Over time, they became part and parcel of a powerful propaganda campaign not deficient in scholarly pretentions. As a result, presenting in summary form the essence of the concept of ‘R2P’ (in the way I have attempted above) is beset with the problem stemming from the presence of subtle variations in its different expositions. Writings by Daaler (2007) or Rice (2007) or those sponsored by the ‘Chicago-based R2P Coalition’, for example, differ significantly, especially in respect of focus and thrust, from, say, those authored by, say, Deng (1996), Weiss (2007) or Welsh (2007). Even the leading exponents of the ‘R2P’ concept like Gareth Evans and Louise Arbour have tended to vary their stances in respect of vital matters such as its ‘legal status’ vis-a-vis international relations, its scope (especially on whether it applies only to the four types of rights violations mentioned in the UN Charter – genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing), its operational modalities (advisory, supportive, coercive, repressive etc.), and its objectives (pre-emptive, preventive, remedial or punitive). Differences could also be discerned in their views relating to the prudence/ feasibility/legitimacy of bypassing the Security Council and/or circumventing UN-based obstacles - especially those that originate in the UN Commission on Human Rights4 – to the exercise of the ‘R2P’ in conflict situations.
In the context of this hazy backdrop it is necessary to preface the present scrutiny of the implications of the ‘R2P’ with the clarification that the ‘R2P’ does not have a legal status pertaining to relations between States at any level. Forceful professional confirmation of this view could, in fact, be found in several writings the most persuasive among which, in my view, being the paper by Byres and Chesterman (2008) according to which "humanitarian intervention in the guise of ‘R2P’ is not lawful, nor should it become so by expanding treaty interpretations and changing customary international law".
In the efforts to provide the ‘R2P’ with a legal garb, one of the most frequent claims made is that the endorsement of the so-called ‘Summit Outcome’ by the UN General Assembly in 2005 represented the formal adoption of the doctrine by the world body.
What was asked for; what was promised and what is going to be offered?
by Sumanasiri Liyanage
(June 30, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) In Sri Lankan politics, things oftentimes turn topsy-turvy. When people ask for lower prices for basic food items, government lowers prices of luxury cars with the ludicrous argument that the latter would in turn benefit people! The same thing is being done in the sphere of constitutional reforms as well. At the last Parliamentary Election, one of the key appeals that the United Peoples' Freedom Alliance made was that it be given a two-thirds majority in the new Parliament so that it could amend the Second Republic Constitution to change the electoral system.People appeared to have realised the need for changing the electoral system that has created intra-party conflict for preferential votes (manapa pore) with heavy campaign expenses on the one hand and the distanciation of elected members from the citizens on the other. As a necessary corollary of massive campaign expenses, financiers have naturally been placed before the people in the process of post-election decision-making. In the context in which the UPFA government is planning to present a bill to the Parliament to amend the Constitution, I think people of this country should be attentive and see if the amendments are actually oriented towards correcting the existing flaws of the present Constitution. Is what the government has proposed consistent with what the people asked for? What is the resemblance of the government's proposals to what UPFA leaders promised to the people prior to the last Parliamentary election? How should people react, respond and resist in case of inconsistency and non-resemblance? These are the kind of questions I intend to address in this article.
Since the late 1980s, there has been a general consensus that the Second Republican Constitution that was enacted in 1978 and the State structure set up by it should be replaced by a new Constitution based on a new set of principles. It has also been emphasized that a legal foundation for a new State structure radically different from that which has existed since 1948 should be laid. Prior to the Parliamentary and Presidential elections of 1994, discussions on this subject at different fora took place and new constitutional principles were delineated. At least two areas of the Second Republican Constitution (SRC) that need significant and far reaching changes were specified immediately after its enactment in 1978. These two areas are (1) the excessive powers of the executive president and the downgrading of Parliament, and (2) the electoral system based on Proportional Representation that made representative and represented distant from each other.
Subsequently, the constitutional discourse also raised the issue that a highly centralized State structure that emanated from the First and Second Republican Constitutions should be transformed in order to meet the basic needs and the demands for power-sharing of the numerically small nations and other ethnic groups. Hence, the nexus between State restructuring and the establishment of peace, democracy, justice and human rights were widely recognized. The unresolved national question and the violation of human rights in the South in the late 1980s contributed immensely to the emergence of this general consensus. The election manifestos of the two principal candidates at the presidential election in 1994, Gamini Disanayaka of the United National Party (UNP) and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga of the Peoples' Alliance (PA) mentioned explicitly that if elected as the President of Sri Lanka, they would introduce a system of devolution of power as a means of resolving the national question and changes to the executive presidential system. In the early 1990s, the environment for constitutional changes of democratic nature appeared to be favourable and encouraging. However, the situation changed significantly and the favourable environment began to fade away due to multiple reasons. In spite of this situational shift, one may note a development that had a positive implication with mixed outcomes, namely, the continuation of the constitutional debate in the form of drafting a new Constitution. Although the drafting process contributed in defining basic constitutional principles, it had led to polarization of opinions on constitutional change, particularly on the issue of power-sharing.
Nonetheless, at the Presidential elections in 2005 and 2010, two principal candidates sought a popular mandate to change the SRC by introducing amendments to reduce the powers of the executive president, to change the electoral system and to introduce some kind of power-sharing arrangements. This was what Mahinda Chinthanaya (MC) proposed in 2005 in relation to executive presidency: "I expect to present a constitution that will propose the abolition of the executive presidency" (p. 97). It also proposed as an interim measure to amend the constitution to make president answerable to the Parliament. In addition to above changes, MC aimed at improving people's rights by amalgamating to the SRC a Bill of Rights. It says: "Steps will be taken to include 'the Charter of Rights' into the Constitution based on the Declaration of the United Nations and other international treaties to uphold and protect social, cultural, political, economic and civil rights of all Sri Lankans" (p. 98).
In order to get consensus on constitutional reforms, President Rajapaksa convened an all-party meeting and asked All Party Representative Committee to come up with proposals for a new Constitution/ or substantial changes to the existing Constitution. On the basis of its interim report, he reiterated that his government would take steps to implement fully the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which had been violated by all previous governments. The last Parliament also appointed a select committee to recommend electoral reforms so that flaws of proportional representation system could be corrected.
Table 1 summarizes the main features of the constitutional discourse in Sri Lanka for the last five years. It shows how and to what extent expectations and desires of the people were abused by the politicians in post-election periods. Columns one and two show close resemblance, but column 3 deviated from them substantially and it gives the impression that politicians are more and more concerned about self-aggrandizement rather than meeting people's demands and satisfying their desires. One may argue that there is no consensus on Area 3, namely, power-sharing, although two main parties, the SLFP and the UNP, have accepted the position that some degree of power-sharing is imperative in addressing the issue of numerically small national groups. But the irony is that there is no progress in Area 1, 2, and 3 in spite of the fact since the late 1980s almost all the political parties have been in broad agreement on these three areas of constitutional reforms. This in itself shows one of the basic problems of the Sri Lankan political system, namely, the nature of representation that stems directly from the existing constitutional framework the influence of other factors notwithstanding.
It is imperative that for this purpose people participate actively in the process of constitution-making and bring pressure on their representative in the Parliament and reactivate their own organizations. Constitutional amendments are a national issue and they should necessarily transcend party boundaries. Hence, people should demand an open and free vote in the Parliament on the issue of constitution change.
The writer teaches political economy at the University of Peradeniya E-mail: sumane_l@yahoo.com
by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury reporting from Dhaka
(June 30, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh amir, Motiur Rahman Nizami, secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Nayeb-e-Amir Delwar Hossain Saydee were arrested on Tuesday [June 29, 2010] hours after a Dhaka court had ordered their arrest on charges of hurting religious sentiments of Muslims. They were taken to Detective Branch headquarters on Minto Road in the capital.
The Detective Branch arrested Nizami at the National Press Club about 5:00 pm when he came out after attending a program. Moulana Delwar Hussain Saydee was arrested at his house at Shahidbagh area in Dhaka in the city at 5:15 pm.
The police picked Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed up in front of the National Martyrs’ Memorial at Savar, on the outskirts of the capital, about 4:30 pm when he was on his way to Faridpur.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police assistant deputy commissioner Walid Hossain told reporters the three Jamaat leaders had been arrested in compliance with the warrants issued by the court. They will be produced in court on June 30, he said. He also said the police were trying to arrest the Dhaka city unit Jamaat amir Rafiqul Islam Khan.
The Ramna police took position in front of the Jamaat headquarters at Moghbazar area in Dhaka at 5:00 pm to thwart any unpleasant situation as a large number of Jamaat activists gathered there after the arrests, the police officer-in-charge, Shibly Nomani, said.
The police arrested Jamaat activists Kamal, Ibrahim, Mahbubur Rahman and Alamgir at the Jatrabari crossing about 6:00 pm when the Jamaat activists brought out a procession in protest against the arrests of their leaders, the Jatrabari police officer-in-charge, M Moniruzzaman, said.
Jamaat activists clashed with the ruling Awami League-backed Bangladesh Chhatra League [student from of the ruling party] activists in front of the Press Club during at the time of Nizami’s arrest.
Jamaat will go out on demonstrations across the country on June 30, 2010 in protest at against the arrest of three of its top leaders.
Immediately after the arrests, the party’s central committee made the decision at an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening, Jamaat’s nayeb-e-amir (vice-president) Maqbul Ahmad told reporters after the meeting.
Our correspondent at Savar said Jamaat activists had brought out a procession in front of the Ashulia police station after Mojaheed’s arrest. Ten Jamaat activists were injured as the police dispersed them. The police also arrested Jamaat activist Sohel.
Earlier in the day, Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Mehdi Hasan Talukder issued the warrants for the arrest of Nizami, Mojaheed, Saydee, and Rafiqul as they did not appear in court in defiance of its summons. Another accused in the case, the Islami Chhatra Shibir president, ASM Yahia, however, secured bail from the same court in the same case.
The court posted for August 3 the next hearing in the case.
On March 21, the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation [a radical group supported by the ruling party]’s secretary general Syed Rezaul Haque Chandpuri filed the case with a metropolitan magistrate’s court accusing them of hurting religious sentiments of the Muslims. The case stated Rafiqul Islam Khan at a discussion in Dhaka on March 17 compared jamaat’s leader Moulana Motiur Rahman Nizami with the Prophet of Islam.
“The accused compared Nizami with our beloved prophet, saying Nizami is facing the same conspiracies that our Prophet Muhammad faced while he was preaching Islam during his lifetime. Thus they hurt the Muslim sentiments,” the case statement said.
The Jamaat leaders were initially summoned to appear in court on April 28 but they did not show up.
Thy court on April 28 issued another summon asking them to appear before in court and that was also disobeyed.
"Today, what remains of democracy and the rule of law in Sri Lanka is no different to the dream that amputees have about the continued existence of their lost limbs. The phantom limb complex prevails, while in reality, justice is impossible for those who have been victims of political crimes, as well as those who have suffered serious crimes, such as murder or rape." ______________
by Basil Fernando
(June 29, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) For many decades now, international journalists have interpreted every story that has emerged from Sri Lanka to be some kind of war story. Some journalists have proposed that Sri Lanka’s use of overwhelming force was able to eradicate terrorism in the country, and that other countries such as the United States, should follow suit. The pathetic failure of international journalism is demonstrated by these endeavours. In recent years, Sri Lanka has undergone a systemic collapse, as the rule of law system and any semblance of democracy have crumbled. This is a story that has never been portrayed adequately by international journalists; instead, almost all journalists continue to refer to Sri Lanka as a democracy. Journalists focus on Sri Lanka as a war zone, and there is little reflection about the development of Sri Lanka outside of the discourse of war. _____________________________________ Depuis maintenant plusieurs décennies, les journalistes internationaux ont interprété toutes les histoires venues du Sri Lanka comme autant d’histoires de guerre. Certains ont suggéré que l’utilisation massive de la force a permis d’éradiquer le terrorisme au Sri Lanka et que d’autres pays comme les Etats-Unis devraient suivre cet exemple. Ces tentatives d’analyse démontrent l’échec pathétique qu’a connu le journalisme international au Sri Lanka........
In the south, the Sri Lankan government carried out one of the most ruthless acts of repression in history, killing tens of thousands of civilians between the 1970s and 1990s. The official number of disappearances at the hands of Southern rebel group, Janatha Vimuksthi Peramuna (JVP) is estimated to be around the figure of 30,000. Numerous civil society organizations and international agencies believe that this figure does not fully represent the magnitude of this repression. In terms of statistics, the scale of disappearances that took place in Sri Lanka is similar to what took place in Argentina in the late 1970s. However, while the disappearances in Argentina gained international outrage, the references to similar occurrences which took place in Sri Lanka have been few and far between. The disappearances took place in the south, and the Sri Lankan police and military were mobilized to kill Southern rebels, most of whom were Sinhalese. Since this story did not conform to the ethnic war story that international journalists were constructing about Sri Lanka, it was discarded in favor of a story that was more appropriate for their cause.
In 1978, Sri Lanka adopted a Constitution wherein the Executive President was raised above the law. It was a staggering change; instead of the Constitution being used to bring checks and balances to the Sri Lankan government. It obliterated checks and balances for the Executive President and effectively dismantled Sri Lankan democracy. This experiment has survived, and there has begun a discussion of removing the two-term limit of the President in power and creating a possibility for political transformation equivalent to that which took place under Suharto in Indonesia and in several African countries. However, for international journalists, this issue still did not contest the importance of stories about the war.
The transformation of the Sri Lankan democratic government into an authoritarian system has made freedom of expression an almost impossible function. Media agencies bow to the pressure of this repression. Disappearances and other kinds of attack continue to remain a threat to anyone who exercises their right to oppose this political transformation in the country. The murder of Lasantha Wickramatunga and the brutal attack on several other journalists as well as the fleeing of journalists from Sri Lanka remains a symbol of this vicious repression. Even these stories have been only a passing fancy to international journalists. The story of Lasantha Wickramatunga would have been entirely forgotten had he not received international awards for his actions. Even so, no justice of any kind has been dealt to the perpetrators of this murder. In fact, the identity of those who killed Mr. Wickramatunga remains a mystery. There was no credible investigation into the murder of any kind, demonstrating that the once sclerotic justice system is now entirely incapacitated. The story of the collapse of the administration of justice in Sri Lanka has still not been covered by the international press.
Today, what remains of democracy and the rule of law in Sri Lanka is no different to the dream that amputees have about the continued existence of their lost limbs. The phantom limb complex prevails, while in reality, justice is impossible for those who have been victims of political crimes, as well as those who have suffered serious crimes, such as murder or rape. One story which recently came to the surface was of a man traveling with his wife on a motorbike. The couple was stopped and the woman’s arm was cut off so that the thieves could steal her gold bangles, and her finger was cut off so they could take her gold ring. When her husband tried to resist, he was shot. Last week, a CID inspector who dumped the dead body of a murdered person into the sea was discovered. The magistrate had to issue a warrant to get the Deputy Inspector General arrested because he was avoiding court. Such difficulties which face ordinary Sri Lankans do not attract the attention of international journalists.
The collective failure of the international press has aided Sri Lankan authorities in consolidating an authoritarian regime in which the norms that were established to protect citizens have been broken down. Those journalists who believe in the importance of their role in disseminating information must question why the international media has failed to discuss and analyze the situation in Sri Lanka. There are many similar cases going on in other Asian countries and countries around the world. However, the issue remains that the international press has failed to reflect the depth of the crisis that ordinary Sri Lankan citizens continue to face.
(June 29, Karachi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The meeting was attended by three ministers, two from the federal government and one from the Sindh province. The ministers who attended the meeting were Mr. Raza Rabbani, the father of the historic 18th Amendment of the Constitution and Dr. Farooq Sattar, federal minister for Overseas Pakistanis and Mr. Muzzafar Husain Shujra, the Sindh provincial Minister on Prisons.
Mr. Raza Rabani speaking at the meeting said that the National Assembly and the Senate should hold a joint parliamentary committee and form a watchdog to monitor police agencies and other law enforcement agencies. He also said that a human rights literacy campaign should be started in educational institutions and factories to raise awareness among the people. He further added that efforts for legislation for a draft bill for legislation against torture in custody should be highly recommended. He said that the state of human rights, not only in Pakistan but also in the most powerful countries, is deteriorating. The United States has failed to implement the United Nations Convention on Human Rights in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq and by running torture cells and prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Similarly Israel has subjected Pakistanis to torture and the recent attack on the aid flotilla has again proved that they are violating human rights.
Mr. Rabani went on the say that the state of human rights in Pakistan is terrible and there is a dire need to change the mindset of the people. "I believe that passing a law relating to the state of human rights won't solve the problem. We need to change the attitude of the people towards basic human rights and fundamentals".
Speaking on this occasion the Minister for Overseas Pakistanis, Dr. Farooq Satar said that the evil of torture should be nipped in the bud. New ways of torture are now emerging on the surface; illegal detention, torture through public models and torture through extremism.
The president of the Karachi Union of Journalists, Mr. Khursheed Abbasi talked about the impunity that the law enforcement agencies are practicing and the torture of people when they are picked up for interrogation. He said that once someone was tortured it became very difficult for him or her to be rehabilitated into society. He gave the example of Nazir Abbasi, who was allegedly tortured to death by the armed forces. He lauded the fact that the nation had ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Speaking on behalf of the Asian Human Rights Commission Hasan Ahtar spoke on the situation of the rule of law in the country and stressed the need for effective rule of law enforcement and also the need to tackle the problem of widespread torture in the country.
The retired justice Aslam Nasir Zahid said there was a need of a sort of revolution to change the behaviour of both the government and the police parties. He said that if the political party is of a compromising attitude more than half of the country's problems would be resolved.
At this meeting a resolution was signed by many persons calling for legislation to make torture a crime in Pakistan. Several countries of the region have already made legislation to do this, for example neighbouring Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. India has declared that it will bring in legislation to make torture a crime urgently.
A bill is before the Bangladesh parliament to make torture to be recognised as a serious crime. The resolution calls for Pakistan to follow this example and bring about a law as quickly as possible.
All the speakers at this meeting stressed the need to continue this issue and bring about this legislation as early as possible.
(June 29, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) This story unfolds in the background of the significant events Sri Lanka went through in the 80s ,90s and the 2000s. Those were tumultuous times indeed with the JVP uprising, the ethnic conflict of July 1983, the migrations that took place to flee the situation here, the rise of the LTTE and the atrocities perpetrated by this rebel organization ; also the efforts made by the State to solve these issues.The authors have brought out these events beautifully with anecdotal references. Perhaps the impact of the Internet on society could have been brought in. The Internet made transmission of news so fast that it made distortion of news possible which had a negative impact on the country. In the midst of all these problems here was a young man Rohan who was trying to carve out a life for him. The story encapsulates the typical human condition with its existentialist problems. It is the story of a young man who is enmeshed in all these problems and his search of happiness He flees the country in search of peace He is so affected by all these events that he even needed psychotherapy to get back to normalcy. The story is appropriately called Heart Chakra – the centre of one’s being which is the vortex of human emotions – sometimes in conflict and sometimes in harmony. The authors have successfully brought out Rohan’s attempt to cope with them.
The life of the Sri Lankans in Toronto especially that of the “significant minority” the Tamils and their interactions with each other have been brought out clearly. Readers get am insight into the multi cultural nature of Toronto society, brought about by recent migrations from all over the world. The authors have successfully brought out the agony and the ecstasy of normal human relationships in this set up.
This story could easily lend itself into a movie. It could be quite educational – bringing out the life and times of the last 4 decades both in Sri Lanka and Canada. Because of its historic value the yet unborn generations can benefit by it. Congratulations to the authors for a job well done!
(June 29, Havana, Sri Lanka Guardian) As I was writing every one of my previous Reflections, and a catastrophe was quickly zeroing in on humanity, my major concern was to fulfill the primary duty to inform our people.
Today, I feel more relax than 26 days ago. As the situation evolves, I can reiterate and expand on the information to the national and international public.
Obama has committed to attend the quarterfinals match on July 2, if his country’s team makes it to that stage. He supposedly knows better than anyone that the quarterfinals will not be contested because very serious developments will take place before that; or at least he should know.
Last Friday, June 25, an international press agency known for the attention to details in its reports, published a statement by the “…Navy Commander of the elite Corps of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution General Ali Fadavi…,” warning “…that if the United States and its allies inspect Iranian ships in international waters ‘they will have their response in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.’”
The information was taken from the local news agency Mehr of Iran.
According to the press dispatch, said news agency reported that “Fadavi added that ‘the Navy of the Revolutionary Guardians currently has hundreds of vessels equipped with missile launchers.’”
The information, produced approximately at the same time of what Granma published or perhaps before, seemed at some points an exact copy of the Reflections elaborated on Thursday June 24th and ran by that paper on Friday 25th.
The coincidence can be explained by the simple use of a logical reasoning. I was completely unaware of what the Iranian local agency had published.
I have absolutely no doubt that as soon as the American and Israeli warships are deployed –alongside the rest of the American military vessels positioned off the Iranian coasts-- and they try to inspect the first merchant ship from that country, there will be a massive launching of missiles in both directions. At that moment exactly the terrible war will begin. It’s not possible to estimate how many vessels will be sunk or from what country.
Knowing the truth timely is the most important thing for our people.
It doesn’t matter if almost everybody, I’d dare say 99.9% or more of my compatriots, instinctively cling to hopes and agree with my sincere wishes to be wrong. I have talked to people close to me, and I have also received news from many noble, selfless and hardworking people who have read my Reflections and do not challenge my considerations in the least but rather absorb, believe and swallow my reasoning through a dry throat; however, they immediately go back to the tasks to which they devote their energies.
That is precisely what we expect of our compatriots. But it would be worse to suddenly become aware of extremely gave events without having heard as much as a news about such possibility. Then there would be confusion and panic, and that would be unworthy of our heroic Cuban people, which was very close to becoming the target of a massive nuclear strike on October 1962, and still did not hesitate for a second in discharging its duty.
Our brave combatants and the military chiefs of our Revolutionary Armed Forces taking part in heroic internationalist missions were close to becoming the victims of nuclear strikes against the Cuban troops deployed close to the Angolan south border from where the South African racist forces --at the time positioned on the Namibian border-- had been expelled after the battle of Cuito Cuanavale.
The Pentagon, with the consent of the President of the United States, supplied the South African racists through Israel with about 14 nuclear bombs, more powerful than those dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as we have indicated in previous Reflections.
I am neither a prophet nor a fortune teller. Nobody told me a word of what was to happen. It has all been the result of what I today describe as a logical reasoning.
We are neither new to this complicated issue nor are we meddlesome.
It is possible to predict what will happen in the rest of the Portuguese and Spanish speaking Americas during the nuclear post crisis.
Under such circumstances, it will not be possible to talk of capitalism or socialism. A stage will open that will see the management of the available goods and services in this part of the continent. Certainly, every country will continue being ruled by those who head the governments today, some very close to socialism and others euphoric over the opening of the world market to fuels, uranium, copper, lithium, aluminum, iron and other metals being sent to the developed and rich countries today that will suddenly disappear.
An abundance of food exported now to that world market will also disappear abruptly.
In these circumstances, the most basic products needed for life: food, water, fuels, and the resources found in the hemisphere south of the United States will suffice to preserve some of the civilization whose unbridled advance has led humanity into such a disaster.
Nevertheless, there are still some uncertainties. Will the two mightiest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, be able to refrain from using their nuclear weapons against each other?
There is no doubt, however, that from Europe the nuclear weapons of Great Britain and France, allied with the United States and Israel, --the same that enthusiastically imposed the resolution that will inevitably unleash the war, which for the abovementioned reasons will immediately become nuclear-- are threatening the Russian territory even though this country and China have done everything within their capabilities to prevent the conflict.
The economy of the superpower will fall to pieces like a house of cards. The American society is the least prepared to endure a catastrophe like the one the empire has created in the same territory where it started.
We don’t know which will be the effect on the environment of the nuclear weapons that will unavoidably explode in various parts of the world, and that in the least serious variant will happen in abundance.
As for me, to advance a hypothesis would be pure science fiction.
(June 29, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Notorious terror kingpin and Al Qaeda man Mullah Omar has signed a sermon endorsing Islamist Jihad in Bangladesh with the goal of seizing power from the democratically elected government thus transforming the moderate Muslim nation into an Islamic republic. According to various sources, a number of Islamist politicians and clergies in Bangladesh are having regular contact with Mullah Omar and other top ranking terrorists in Al Qaeda. It is already reported that, Jihadists are taking extensive preparations under the direct guidance of Al Qaeda kingpins to stage Islamic revolution in Bangladesh. With this goal, recruitment and training of Jihadists are continuing in more than 71,000 Madrassas throughout the country as well as hidden training camps within Chittagong Hill Tract area, Burmese Border and mountains in Nepal.
Being heavily combated by US forces in Afghanistan, several top ranking Al Qaeda kingpins moved to South Asian region. It was even reported few years back that, Osama Bin Laden also was shuttling in between his hidden bases in Afghanistan and Nepal’s mountainous areas.
Osama Bin Laden was reportedly not happy with the concept of Bengali nationalism among the Muslims of Bangladesh. Accordingly, after the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989 he convened a meeting of some of his trusted Mujahideens from Bangladesh and advised them to organise the Muslim youths to transform their country into Dar-Ul-Islam. A number of Bangladeshi Jihadists were reportedly present in the meeting. In 1998, Osama Bin Laden formed International Islamic Front [IIB] for Jihad against Jews and Christians. This group was formed with Jihadists from Egypt, Pakistan, Iran and Bangladesh. On February 23, 1998 IIF issued a Fatwa with signature of Osama Bin Laden calling upon Muslims to attack on all Americans including civilians. With long-term strategy to replace the existing political structure of the word with Caliphate, Laden’s immediate priority was to destroy the USA and its allies.
In 2004 TIME magazine reported in an article that Bangladesh may become a dangerous new front in America's war against terror and militant Islamic groups may be using Bangladesh to hide arms and ammunition. It followed a similar story that appeared in Far Eastern Economic Review in April 2004. Earlier on October 14, 2002, journalist Alex Perry wrote another article titled ‘Deadly Cargo’ in TIME magazine described how arms and explosives were transported within Bangladeshi territory by a ship named MV Mecca. Though none of the Bangladeshi sources ever were even aware of this huge deadly cargo, Alex Perry’s investigative journalism brought a huge picture of great concern on spot light.
Port-workers that night said they saw five motor launches ferry in large groups of men from the boat wearing black turbans, long beards and traditional Islamic salwar kameez. Their towering height suggested these travelers were foreigners, and the boxes of ammunition and the AK-47s slung across their shoulders helped sketch a sinister picture. Then in July, a senior member of Bangladesh's largest terrorist group, the 2,000-strong al-Qaeda-allied Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami [HUJI], told TIME the 150 men who entered Bangladesh that night were Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan. Three senior Bangladeshi military sources also confirmed this was the case. And on Oct. 7 2002, Indian police arrested Burmese-born HUJI fighter and weapons courier Fazle Karim [alias Abu Fuzi] as he arrived in Kolkata [Indian state] by train from Kashmir. A veteran of al-Qaeda's camps in eastern Afghanistan who told his interrogators he had twice met Osama Bin Laden, Karim said he recognized two people he had trained with in Afghanistan while visiting HUJI hideouts in Bangladesh in August. The pair told him they were part of a group of "more than 100 Arabs and Afghans, belonging to al-Qaeda and the Taliban who had arrived by ship at Chittagong in winter [by MV Mecca]," Karim said, according to transcripts of his interview with Indian police.
Under the headline "Beware Bangladesh," the article warned that Bangladesh had become a "cocoon of terrorism".
On December 2005 journalist Chris Blackburn in an article titled ‘Bangladesh: Osama’s New Haven’ published in Front Page Magazine wrote, “In the present debate over terrorism threats, Bangladesh is generally not the first country that comes to mind as a hotspot of al-Qaeda activity. But perhaps it should. The second largest Muslim democracy, Bangladesh is today the site of al-Qaeda-run training camps financed by Middle Eastern charities and organisations, including backing from rogue elements within the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Just as important, it is a laboratory for the disastrous consequences of Islamist participation in the democratic process.”
According to various sources, a number of Arab-funded charitable organizations having direct and indirect connections with Al Qaeda, HAMAS and similar terrorist outfits are actively involved in patronizing and funding terrorist activities inside Bangladesh. These are: Revival of Islamic Heritage Society [RIHS], Rabita Al-Alam Al-Islami, Society of Social Reforms, Qatar Charitable Society, Al-Muntada Al-Islami, International Islamic Relief Agency, Al-Forkan Foundation, International Relief Organization [IRO], Kuwait Joint Relief Committee and the Muslim Aid Bangladesh [UK], Organization of Repatriated Soldiers from Palestine, Al Markajul Islam etc.
Increased operatives of Al Qaeda linked terror outfits in Bangladesh is even endorsed by the ruling Bangladesh Awami League. The party on its official website has published an article titled ‘A New Hub of Terrorism’ by Selig S. Harrison.
In contrary, Bangladeshi governments have been reacting fiercely to any suggestions that the country is becoming a haven for Islamic extremism. It banned the distribution of the Far Eastern Economic Review issue that carried Bartil Lintner's article in 2002. Newspaper offices have been raided and journalists taken into custody for investigating the al-Qaeda presence in the country. Even a case of sedition, treason and blasphemy is continuing in Dhaka court against me since 2004 [January] as I published investigative report on breeding of Jihadists inside Madrassas.
In the article, Bartil Lintner wrote, “Among the more than 60 video tapes that the American cable television network CNN obtained from the Al Qaeda's archives in Afghanistan in August this year, one is marked 'Burma' [Myanmar], and purports to show Muslim 'allies' training in that country. While the group shown, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation [RSO], was founded by Rohingya Muslim's from Myanmar's Rakhine State and claims to be fighting for autonomy or independence for its people, the tape was, in fact, shot in Bangladesh. The RSO, and other Rohingya factions, have never had any camps inside Myanmar, only across the border in Bangladesh. The camp in the video is located near the town of Ukhia, southeast of Cox's Bazaar, and not all of the RSO's "fighters" are Rohingyas from Myanmar.
“In an interview with the CNN in December 2001, American 'Taliban' fighter, John Walker Lindh, relates that the Al-Qaeda-directed ansar [companions of the Prophet] brigades, to which he had belonged in Afghanistan, were divided along linguistic lines: "Bengali, Pakistani [Urdu] and Arabic," which suggests that the Bengali-speaking component - Bangladeshi and Rohingya - must have been significant. It is now also becoming clear that some militants fleeing the American strikes in Afghanistan in late 2001 have ended up in Bangladesh. With the heavy American presence in Pakistan, many militants who fled Afghanistan in October and November 2001 have found it safer to hide in third countries. In early 2002, a ship reportedly sailed from Karachi to Chittagong carrying assorted militants from Afghanistan.”
There is no doubt that Madrassas have become actively linked to terrorism and terrorist training camps. Many journalists and commentators have suggested that these madrassas teach Jihadist literature in their course of studies and that their entire curriculum is intended to produce holy warriors. It has also been suggested by many Western scholars that there is an inherent relationship between what is taught in the madrassas on the one hand and religious extremism, Talibanism, militancy, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and terrorism, on the other. Madrassa students, through their reading of religious texts, become soldiers of Allah [God] and engage in militant activities against those they consider enemies of Islam. Clergies and teachers in Madrassas teach the students to hate Jews and Christians and term them as enemies of Islam, thus giving instigations of Jihad, alluring heaven and 72-virgins, if anyone would become martyr.
In a number of madrassas in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden huge portrait is on display to project him as a ‘Hero of Islam’. Even such pictures are sold in the open market in most of the Muslim nations.
Al Qaeda’s Next Generation of Jihadists:
Experts speculate widely about the composition and tactics of the next generation of Jihadists. This speculation stems from the fact that trans-national groups are harder collection targets than nation-states. Such ambiguity and imprecision is likely to endure indefinitely, and is particularly worrisome concerning "next-generation" terrorism studies.
Osama bin Laden has been planning for the next generation of Jihadists since he began speaking publicly in the mid-1990s. Bin Laden has always described the "defensive jihad" against the United States as potentially a multi-generational struggle. After the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden explained that, even as the anti-U.S. war intensified, the torch was being passed from his generation to the next. "We have been struggling right from our youth," bin Laden wrote in late 2001:
"We sacrificed our homes, families, and all the luxuries of this worldly life in the path of Allah. In our youth, we fought with and defeated the [former] Soviet Union, a world super power, and now we are fighting the USA. We have never let the Muslim Ummah down.
"Muslims are being humiliated, tortured and ruthlessly killed all over the world, and its time to fight these satanic forces with the utmost strength and power. Today the whole of the Muslim Ummah is depending upon the Muslim youth, hoping that they would never let them down."
The question arising is, of course, what threat will the next generation of al-Qaeda-inspired Jihadist pose? Based on the admittedly imprecise information available, the answer seems to lie in three discernible trends: [a] the next generation will be at least as devout but more professional and less operationally visible; [b] it will be larger, with more adherents and potential recruits; and [c] it will be better educated and more adept at using the tools of modernity, particularly communications and weapons.
The next Jihadist generation's piety will equal or exceed that of bin Laden's generation. The new Jihadist, having grown up in an internet and satellite television-dominated world, will be more aware of Muslim struggles around the world, more comfortable with a common Muslim identity, more certain that the U.S.-led West is "oppressing" Muslims, and more inspired by the example bin Laden has set—bin Laden's generation had no bin Laden. While leaders more pious than Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are hard to imagine, Western analysts tend to forget that many of Bin Laden's first-generation lieutenants did not mirror his intense religiosity.
The rising Jihadists are less likely to follow the example of some notorious first-generation fighters, and more likely to model themselves on the smiling, pious, and proficient Mohammed Atef, al-Qaeda's military commander, killed in late 2001 and, to this day, al-Qaeda's most severe individual loss. A former Egyptian security officer, Atef was efficient, intelligent, patient, ruthless—and nearly invisible. He was a combination of warrior, thinker, and bureaucrat, pursuing his leaders' plans with no hint of ego. Atef's successor as military commander, the Egyptian Sayf al-Adl, is cut from the same cloth. Four years after succeeding Atef, for example, Western analysts cannot determine his identity—whether he is in fact a former Egyptian Special Forces colonel named Makkawi—or his location—whether he in South Asia, Iraq, or under arrest in Iran. Similarly, the Saudis' frequent publication of lengthening lists of "most wanted" al-Qaeda fighters—many unknown in the West—suggests the semi-invisible Atef-model is also used by Gulf state Islamists. Finally, the U.K.-born and -raised suicide bombers of July 7, 2005 foreshadow the next Jihadist generation who will operate below the radar of local security services.
At the basic level, the steady pace of Islamist insurgencies around the world—Iraq, Chechnya and the northern Caucasus, southern Thailand, Mindanao, Kashmir and Afghanistan—and the incremental "Talibanization" of places like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and northern Nigeria, ensure a bountiful new Jihadist generation. Less-tangible factors will also contribute to this bounty.
Osama Bin Laden remains the un-rivaled hero and leader of Muslim youths aspiring to join the Jihadist. His efforts to inspire young Muslims to jihad against the U.S.-led West seem to be proving fruitful.
Easily accessible satellite television and Internet streaming video will broaden Muslim youths' perception that the West is anti-Islamic. U.S. public diplomacy cannot negate the impressions formed by real-time video from Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan that shows Muslims battling "aggressive" Western forces and validating bin Laden’s claim that the West intends to destroy Islam.
The ongoing "fundamentalization" of the two great, evangelizing monotheist religions will enhance an environment already conducive to Islamism. The growth of Protestant evangelicalism in Latin America, and the aggressive, "church militant" form of Roman Catholicism in Africa, has and will revitalize the millennium-old Islam-vs.-Christianity confrontation, creating a sense of threat and defensiveness on each side. Compounding the threat posed by the next, larger generation is the possibility that analysts underestimated the first generation's size. Western leaders have consistently claimed large al-Qaeda-related casualties; currently, totals range from 5,000-7,000 fighters and two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leadership. If the claims are accurate, we should ponder whether the West has ever fought a "terrorist group" that can lose 5,000-7,000 fighters, dozens of leaders, and still be assessed militarily potent and perhaps WMD-capable? The multiple captures of al-Qaeda's "third-in-command"—most recently Abu Ashraf al-Libi—and the remarkable totals of "second- and third-in-commands" from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization suggests the West's accounting of Islamist manpower—at the foot soldier and leadership levels—is, at best, tenuous.
Recent scholarship suggests al-Qaeda and its allies draw support primarily from Muslim middle- and upper-middle classes. This helps explain why bin Laden places supreme importance on exploiting the internet for security, intelligence, paramilitary training, communications, propaganda, religious instruction, and news programs. It also points to the West's frequent failure to distinguish between the Islamists' hatred for Westernization—women's rights and secularism, for example—and their openness to modernity's tools, especially communications and weaponry.
Tricks of Al Qaeda:
As part of its tactic of motivating Muslims in becoming haters of Unites States and the West, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are putting highest emphasis on the fact of continuing anti Semitic sentiments in the minds of the Muslim population, as well as leave an impression that, Palestinians are being oppressed and killed by ‘occupation’ forces under direct patronization of United States and the Western nations. Bin Laden continues to achieve success in molding minds of leaders in a number of Muslim nations in treating Israel as an enemy nation thus openly opposing the existence of this only Jewish democratic state in the Middle East. There are a number of Muslim nations in the world, which already have established diplomatic or trade relations with Israel, while some nations are yet to recognize Israel. But in the entire Muslim world, Bangladesh is the only country, which continues complete ban on Israel. For example, Bangladesh authorities do not allow trade, telecommunication, postal services and any means of communications with Israel. Some of the influential figures in the government in Bangladesh continue to believe that establishing any contacts with Israel is sedition. In 2008, the then Bangladeshi foreign advisor in the military backed interim government; Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury officially pronounced elimination of Israel from the global map and termed United States as the ‘main culprit’ for patronization Israel. Such theory of Dr. Iftekhar was the echo of Iranian, Palestinian and other extremist nations. It was even reported in international media that, Dr. Iftekhar was inclined in having closer ties with terror patron nations like Iran. Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is the editor of Weekly Blitz, the only anti-Jihadist newspaper published in Bangladesh.
